Donald Trump Has Already Hurt Your Club

Like any university, UC Berkeley has thousands of student organizations. Our club culture is an immutable part of our school’s culture, as both a beacon for student activism and a hallmark of our bay-area-professional-ai-startup-consulting-club-ness. Practically every student is in at least one organization, no matter where on the Grilled Cheese Club to Big Data at Berkeley spectrum they sit. Above it all presides our ASUC, the organization responsible for the establishment, support, and funding of these student groups. This is to say, touch the ASUC in some way, and the effect is felt across the entire RSO network, ultimately affecting every student on campus in some way. Donald Trump has done just that. Trump’s attack on higher education has had a quietly insidious side effect on our student government, and it has already hurt those involved in many clubs. However, we are only one year into this term, meaning three more years for this administration to potentially have greater unknown effects on campus life.

I am in my second year of sitting on the board of the ASUC’s Grant and Scholarship Foundation (GSF). The GSF is responsible for allocating grants to students for research, technology, and professional development. We also allocate funds to DeCal facilitators and to RSOs for club-travel expenses. Our money is not federal, and we feel great pride in the fact that our grant money is untouchable by Trump. However, this does not mean that our money is unaffected by this administration. In just one year, Donald Trump has completely altered the landscape of who needs these grants and why. 

Last year, I conducted interviews with people who needed money to put a probe on the International Space Station, a woman who received an invitation to speak in front of the entire United Nations, and a research team on the cutting edge of seafloor Wi-Fi cables. Berkeley is the best and brightest, and it is extraordinary that the ASUC uses its funds to transform these people’s lives in this way, enabling them to make new discoveries and have novel experiences. This year, I conducted a handful of similar interviews, but we received a massive influx of new grant proposals with the same bottom line: “My organization has never applied for  this grant before because we have never had to.”

Some of them were what you would have come to anticipate. Our interview cycle coincided with the government shutdown. We took interviews during the week SNAP was paused. I heard several technology grant proposals from people who had to use their MacBook money for essentials because they did not know when food stamps would return. I heard from more people than I can count who told me their research funding got cut out of nowhere. These times force people to expect this. It is the kind of outcome that happens out loud and on the news for everyone to see. However, more quietly, another direct outcome of the Trump administration affects our school. 

Many DeCals on campus get their funding from their department, and many clubs rely on free federal resources. This year, I heard from several DeCals who were allotted nothing from their respective academic departments because of large, Trump-inflicted budget cuts. These DeCals are focused on making science and lab work accessible to anybody, particularly valuable at a school where getting a spot in a lab is highly competitive. Because of Donald Trump, these DeCals are unable to offer these experiences to students at the level they have been able to before. Many of these DeCals have had to rely on money from their sister RSOs to survive, but this is not financially sustainable. Additionally, many clubs have historically utilized free federal resources to further their mission, but many of these have dried up. We funded an organization that was requesting money for aerospace engineering case-studies; they used to be free, but now they cost twelve dollars a piece, per student, per week. For a DeCal of thirty people, that’s thousands of dollars worth of information that six months ago would have been zero. 

To the outsider, it may seem like Trump has just affected science-oriented organizations; however, the future of all RSOs is at risk. ABSA is the yearly budget allocation from the ASUC, with a large chunk of it going to student organizations. Because department money has dried up, science and research clubs will be asking for more money through ABSA than ever before. This will probably end up hurting every organization, as there will simply be less money to go around. Currently, the Trump administration is affecting our student body’s ability to practice and learn science. By killing federal university funding, Donald Trump punched a giant hole into the RSO economy that ABSA will have to assuage. Our ABSA allocation will look different this year. Every organization will likely be affected in some way. Your club, my club, and your roommate’s club will inevitably get less money next allocation to make up for this disparity. 

Trump is very good at making the terrible things he does visible: he live-tweets the abduction of major world leaders, he sends ICE into our communities, and dispatches the National Guard into our cities. But Trump’s most insidious effect is the unseen footprint he leaves behind when the news cycle turns over that week. We have no idea how many people in developing countries will die because Trump cut USAID, or how many children will get sick when we reduce the vaccine schedule. But more importantly, it is impossible to care about tuberculosis rates in Malaysia and smallpox rates in Missouri because of how dominating Trump is in the news cycle. This summer, my tiny hometown made national news when Trump sent ICE to raid our farms. The next week, everyone forgot about it. But it was we in our community who had to rebuild; months later, our town is still not the same. It is impossible to hold every Trump atrocity in your head because every week he creates a new one, but it is we actually living and experiencing America, who have to reckon with every transgression. 

In 2025, Donald Trump dissolved the Department of Education and slashed Berkeley’s funding, making headlines. The media has not mentioned it in months, but we are still on campus experiencing the fallout. It is harder to get research funding, it is impossible to get funding for your DeCal, and it will be harder for your club to get funding, because of him. It is impossible to have a Berkeley experience without having a Berkeley club experience. They are a key part of how students live their lives. By knocking over the domino of research funding, Donald Trump has inadvertently affected the way club money will get allocated, touching the lives of every student on the UC Berkeley campus.

It may seem like there is no way out of this labyrinth, but the more you force yourself to look at this problem and not look away, the easier it will be to solve it. To call attention to this issue, to make as many people aware of it as possible, will inevitably force change. Berkeley has long been a bastion of free speech and activism against bad government actors, and, as long as we are strong together in this battle, we can continue this fight in perpetuity.